June 28, 2019
The unintended consequences of killing wolves

Note: Dr. Stan Gehrt, director of McGraw’s Center for Wildlife Research, recently was featured in a Washington Post article, which follows.
By Darryl Fears/Washington Post
McGraw photo
On a cold, miserable morning in May, Stan Gehrt trod across an open field as wind and rain blew in his face. He was leading a team of wildlife biologists on a mission to find an animal with a gift for not being seen.

The team didn’t have to travel far from its headquarters for the search. A female coyote had made a den within sight of Chicago’s skyline. They were only “about five kilometers” from one of America’s busiest airports, O’Hare International, Gehrt said as he advanced toward the den, wind howling through his cellphone microphone during an interview.

Like every state east of the Mississippi, Illinois is worried about its growing population of city-slicker coyotes. The animals surged from their original habitat in the West after what many now consider a colossal mistake — government-sanctioned predator removal programs that virtually wiped out red and gray wolves.

Coyotes have been taking over the territory of wolves, their mortal enemies, ever since.

How Chicago contributes to ‘dead zone’
By Tony Briscoe/Chicago Tribune
Photo by Mia Battaglia/flickr
Just off the coast of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River lets out into the Gulf of Mexico, an enormous algae bloom, fueled by fertilizer from Midwestern farm fields and urban sewage, creates an area so devoid of oxygen it’s uninhabitable to most marine life every summer.

Nutrients like nitrogen from fertilizer and phosphorus from sewage act as a catalyst for algae growth. While algae are the base of the food chain for some fish, when these green plumes proliferate beyond what fish are capable of eating, their decomposition consumes much of the oxygen in the water.

This year, historic rains and  flooding in the Midwest have roiled farm fields   and overwhelmed sewer systems, flushing a tremendous amount of nutrients into the Mississippi River and into the Gulf, spurring a remarkable amount of algae. While the agricultural runoff from farms — exempted under the Clean Water Act — is the main driver of the Gulf dead zone, Chicago’s sewage is the largest single source of phosphorus pollution.

Why we just can’t resist puppy-dog eyes
By Haley Weiss/The Atlantic
Photo by goebeletc/flickr
Dogs, more so than almost any other domesticated species, are desperate for human eye contact. When raised around people, they begin fighting for our attention when they’re as young as four weeks old. It’s hard for most people to resist a petulant flash of puppy-dog eyes—and according to a new study, that pull on the heartstrings might be exactly why dogs can give us those looks at all.

A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesfound that dogs’ faces are  structured for complex expression  in a way that wolves’ aren’t, thanks to a special pair of muscles framing their eyes. These muscles are responsible for that “adopt me” look that dogs can pull by raising their inner eyebrows. It’s the first biological evidence scientists have found that domesticated dogs might have evolved a specialized ability used expressly to communicate better with humans.

For the study, a team at the University of Portsmouth’s Dog Cognition Centre looked at two muscles that work together to widen and open a dog’s eyes, causing them to appear bigger, droopier, and objectively cuter. 

Lawmakers propose permanent LWCF funding
TRCP
Photo by Becci Sheptock/flickr
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have introduced a bill (H.R. 3195) to fully and permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund and invest in sportsmen’s access.   

Public lands advocates have been calling for this permanent investment in the successful outdoor recreation access program for several years now, with ramped up support for this needed fix  since  Congress permanently reauthorized LWCF in March 2019

U.S. Representatives Jeff Van Drew (D-N.J.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R -Pa.) introduced the bipartisan legislation, which directs $900 million annually to the LWCF trust fund account. The bill also has support from House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and the five Natural Resource Subcommittee Chairs. 

When the LWCF was created, Congress intended for the full $900 million, underwritten by a small portion of annual offshore oil and gas lease revenues, to be used for conservation projects each year. However, only about half of those funds are, in fact, allocated to conservation efforts annually. To date, more than $20 billion in potential LWCF funds have been diverted elsewhere. This legislation would ensure $900 million in funding is directed annually to the LWCF account and expended only for projects benefitting conservation, outdoor recreation and access as Congress originally intended for the program. 



Massive hurricane actually helped this bird
By Annie Roth/The New York Times
Photo by Alberto_VO5/flickr
The wrath of Hurricane Sandy’s powerful winds and violent storm surge left considerable damage across New York and New Jersey in October 2012. But for one tiny bird, the cataclysmic storm has been a big help.

“Hurricane Sandy was really good for piping plovers,” said Katie Walker, a graduate student in wildlife conservation at Virginia Tech.

The piping plover is a small, migratory shorebird that nests along North America’s Great Lakes and Atlantic Coast. The species, which is listed as endangered in New York State and threatened federally, has been the focus of intensive conservation efforts for decades. But on one island that was heavily damaged by the big storm, the piping plover population has increased by 93 percent, Ms. Walker and colleagues  reported in the journal Ecosphere this month .

The finding highlights how major weather events can benefit wildlife on barrier islands that humans have engineered to resist storm damage.


“A dog will look at you as if to say, ‘What do you want me to do for you? I’ll do anything for you.’ ”


- Roy Blount Jr.

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